Responsive web design (RWD) approaches seamlessly adapt the layout of a browser window for display across different devices including desktop computers, lap tops, tablets, and mobile phones. The fluid grid technique resizes page elements in relative units (e.g., percentages), rather than absolute units (e.g., pixels). Flexible images are also sized in relative units, so as to prevent them from displaying outside their container. Media queries allow the page to use different CSS style rules based on characteristics of the device (e.g., the browser window width). Tool kits such as Bootstrap and w3schools provide HTML and CSS-based RWD design templates.
Presently known RWD techniques are limited in that they are based entirely on the size of the browser window; that is, they rearrange the contents of a browser window when the entire window is resized to accommodate different media (e.g., tablet, mobile phone, desktop display). However, current RWD approaches do not allow for the rearrangement of contents of a re-sized sub-region within a browser window. Although work-arounds have been proposed for rearranging the contents of an iframe when a browser window is re-sized, presently known RWD techniques do not rearrange the contents of sub-regions other than iframes.
At the same time, modern software development is evolving away from the client-server model toward network-based processing systems that provide access to data and services via the Internet or other networks. In contrast to traditional systems that host networked applications on dedicated server hardware, a “cloud” computing model allows applications to be provided over the network “as a service” supplied by an infrastructure provider. The infrastructure provider typically abstracts the underlying hardware and other resources used to deliver a customer-developed application so that the customer no longer needs to operate and support dedicated server hardware. The cloud computing model can often provide substantial cost savings to the customer over the life of the application because the customer no longer needs to provide dedicated network infrastructure, electrical and temperature controls, physical security and other logistics in support of dedicated server hardware.
Multi-tenant cloud-based architectures have been developed to improve collaboration, integration, and community-based cooperation between customer tenants without sacrificing data security. Generally speaking, multi-tenancy refers to a system where a single hardware and software platform simultaneously supports multiple user groups (also referred to as “organizations” or “tenants”) from a common data storage element (also referred to as a “multi-tenant database”). The multi-tenant design provides a number of advantages over conventional server virtualization systems. First, the multi-tenant platform operator can often make improvements to the platform based upon collective information from the entire tenant community. Additionally, because all users in the multi-tenant environment execute applications within a common processing space, it is relatively easy to grant or deny access to specific sets of data for any user within the multi-tenant platform, thereby improving collaboration and integration between applications and the data managed by the various applications. The multi-tenant architecture therefore allows convenient and cost effective sharing of similar application features between multiple sets of users.